My Cultural Diet

I hate to say it, but I may be over Wes Anderson. Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and even Moonrise Kingdom will always occupy a dear place in my heart. But his more recent movies have become so contrived as to become tedious and disaffecting. Of course, part of Anderson’s appeal has always been his highly stylized and intricately detailed aesthetic, in which all of the artifice underscores and sells the pathos of his stories. But on The Phoenician Scheme, all that exists is the artifice. Yes, Anderson returns to one of his favorite storylines, that of a highly selfish individual (played this time around by Benicio Del Toro) who gradually realizes the error of his ways and awakens to human connections and relationships, and sure, I chuckled on three or four occasions. Ultimately, though, The Phoenician Scheme left me feeling hollow, empty, and bored.

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